The Sacramento Kings are the NBA equivalent of a dumpster fire, having now lost their fifth straight game. But if you’ve followed the Nets at all in the past two years, you know that any team in the midst of a dumpster fire is a team salivating at the opportunity to take down the Nets.

And the Nets almost let it happen. They certainly came close, as a 23-point lead evaporated down the stretch, and the Nets had to ride some late-game Joe Johnson heroics to the finish line.

There was no real standout for the Nets tonight — other than Brook Lopez’s defense, which I’ll talk about later — but the entire team stood out with overall, constant offensive pressure and smart ball movement in the first half. The Kings looked ill-suited to defend the Nets once the ball or man started moving, and the Nets created open shots in the paint.

There were issues in the second half, as the Nets struggled to contain Sacramento’s big scorers and didn’t get many defensive stops outside of Lopez’s occasional mashing in the paint. This one felt eerily like the 100-98 win over the Orlando Magic, when the Nets barely staved off their opponent on the road after opening a 20-plus point lead. But the good news: it’s similar because they won.